Occasional Thoughts on Climate Change

[chubbs]

4 hours ago, tacoman25 said:

China has a major nuclear initiative in action. They have dozens of new nuclear power plants currently being built while the U.S. has none.

That being said, there is a big push from the current administration to build more (primarily to meet rapidly growing datacenter demand due to the AI frenzy), but previous projects have been very slow to get underway.

Yes, China's nuclear generation is increasing rapidly. They are also adding large amounts of hydro and wind. However their biggest source of their new non-fossil power is solar. The solar they are installing this year is roughly equivalent to the entire US nuclear fleet.

 

[donsutherland1]

COP30 is on track to become yet another farce in the process to address climate change. Its agenda contains no items on mitigation. It contains no discussion of a phase-out of fossil fuels. At the same time, it punts the discussion of the Paris climate goal and progress toward that goal to COP31. It is yet another ratification of a status quo that is the primary driver of climate change.

 

[Typhoon Tip]

6 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

COP30 is on track to become yet another farce in the process to address climate change. It's agenda contains no items on mitigation. It contains no discussion of a phase-out of fossil fuels. At the same time, it punts the discussion of the Paris climate goal and progress toward that goal to COP31. It is yet another ratification of a status quo that is the primary driver of climate change.

 

Ironically, there’s an expression for that

”cop out”

[bluewave]

We need to develop a clean technology that can scale up quickly enough and at a low enough cost to actually lead to declining emissions over time. So far solar and wind are just able to supplement fossil fuels and not replace them. The renewables are being used for energy addition rather than transition.

The one piece of good news in this new IEA report is that oil demand would probably increase much more than only 13% without the deployment of renewables between now and 2050. it’s quite possible that the specific energy source and method which will completely replace fossil fuels still hasn’t been developed yet in a scalable form.

 

 

[chubbs]

45 minutes ago, bluewave said:

We need to develop a clean technology that can scale up quickly enough and at a low enough cost to actually lead to declining emissions over time. So far solar and wind are just able to supplement fossil fuels and not replace them. The renewables are being used for energy addition rather than transition.

The one piece of good news in this new IEA report is that oil demand would probably increase much more than only 13% without the deployment of renewables between now and 2050. it’s quite possible that the specific energy source and method which will completely replace fossil fuels still hasn’t been developed yet in a scalable form.

 

 

I don't think the problem is technology. Solar has outperformed expectations for decades. Same for batteries. China has shown that solar can be deployed much faster than any competing energy technology. We could easily match as our solar resource is better than China's. No its the power of the incumbent, misinformation/denial, lack of vision, and geopolitics and others, that are allowing fossil-fuels to linger.

https://x.com/JessePeltan/status/1988427201772245459

[bluewave]

22 minutes ago, chubbs said:

I don't think the problem is technology. Solar has outperformed expectations for decades. Same for batteries. China has shown that solar can be deployed much faster than any competing energy technology. We could easily match as our solar resource is better than China's. No its the power of the incumbent, misinformation/denial, lack of vision, and geopolitics and others, that are allowing fossil-fuels to linger.

https://x.com/JessePeltan/status/1988427201772245459

Chinas development of renewable energy is built on coal. A true energy revolution there would replace coal and not just use renewables as an addition. The reason that fossil fuels are lingering is that the current renewables don’t have to capacity to lead to a true revolution away from fossil fuels yet. 
 

For now, the world isn’t performing an energy transition but an energy addition, where renewables top up oil, gas and coal. Regardless of well-intended green aspirations, that will remain the case for years, if not decades, unless governments impose significant changes.

 

https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/the-end-of-fossil-fuel-era-it-s-nowhere-near-20250911-p5mudo.html

[Typhoon Tip]

1 hour ago, bluewave said:

Wthat can scale up quickly enough and at a low enough cost to actually lead to declining emissions over time. So far solar and wind are just able to supplement fossil fuels and not replace them. The renewables are being used for energy addition rather than transition.

The one piece of good news in this new IEA report is that oil demand would probably increase much more than only 13% without the deployment of renewables between now and 2050. it’s quite possible that the specific energy source and method which will completely replace fossil fuels still hasn’t been developed yet in a scalable form.

 

 

You're both right... 

The biggest problem in humanity isn't technology.  The technology is within reach. There needs to be a motivating "response mechanism." 

Humans won't sense that urgency until they see death and feel pain.   That simple.  

Unfortunately, CC is too silent, too invisible to the everyday experience. That is really the biggest hurdle is a biological limitation. CC doesn't directly appeal to the nature-created and evolved fear and response mechanisms.  Not enough, anyway ... give it some time, 10 30   40 years and it'll cook up some means to do so. 

Changes in attitude comes from an instilling sense of urgency ... that is what is needed. CC necessarily must become the metaphoric gun pressed up against the humanity temple. "do this or trigger gets pulled"  no interference to that objective. That's what will motivate the true and ubiquitous revolution toward green technologies. Until that happens, human beings are too stupid.

At this stage of our species evolution we are brilliant enough to suspect if not outright predict calamity, yet too stupid to believe those visions ... Immediate gratifications and/or preexisting interests that have to be suspended in lieu of what those visions might suggest, becomes a conflict that won't be resolved until people see the death, and feel the pain.   That is stupid. 

Humans won't sense that urgency until they see death and feel pain in a cause-and-effect connection to CC.  It's that simple.   We write these diatribes but we're just ping ponging the same message back and forth, semantically redrawing but the picture we create doesn't change; it comes off as dystopian movie, not what people see out their windows when it is 77 F in May with blue sky light wind and the smell of lilacs.  

But, there are already proven means by physics.  Proven to be plausible, if not demonstrated to work in the lab. The technology exists and is within reach.

My personal position on this is that the campaign needs to be less like a campaign, and more like strategy to get humanity directly connected to the perils of CC in that personal scary way. 

 

 

 

[bluewave]

11 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

You're both right... 

The biggest problem in humanity is "response mechanisms."  Unfortunately, CC is too silent, invisible to the everyday experience - really is a biological limitation.  Change in attitudes from an instilling sense of urgency ... that is what is needed. That will then motivate innovation. That will motivate improving the green tech that's already proven by physics to be plausible for generating electricity.  

Humans won't sense that urgency until they see death and feel pain.   That simple.  

At this stage of our species evolution we are brilliant enough to suspect if not outright predict calamity, yet too stupid to believe those visions ... Immediate gratifications and/or preexisting interests that have to be suspended in lieu of what those visions might suggest, becomes a conflict that won't be resolved until people see the death, and feel the pain.   That is stupid. 

This really is quite simple.  A bit of an irony in that our ultimate extinction may come from the fact that we were not smart enough.  Just smart enough to trigger our own demise.

The innovations are already there.  The Japanese just figured out how extract electrical power from mixing salty seawater and fresh water. It is physically possible to draw all the power humanity needs, with a surplus, without creating Tokamax fusion cores that cost billions in research. The hardship in getting to sustainable fusion reaction is almost like a propaganda delay tactic - fossil fuel hopes to high hell that it take 30 years to develop.  It's all a joke. 

 

There may be something else at work which links back pretty far in the human collective experience. We evolved through very cold conditions during ice ages when many didn’t survive the harsh conditions.

So the cold was something to be feared in generations since those experiences. Warmer conditions were something to be welcomed following these harsh eras. So we don’t have experience yet as a species of warmth being something to be feared.

Instead at least in the U.S, most of our internal migration has been from colder climates to warmer ones. This forum is really in the minority. Since most people outside our forum would be happy if we didn’t really have winters at all. It’s why so many go to Florida during the winters.

If you notice an Arctic outbreak or snowstorm usually gets much more media attention than a heatwave. My guess is that this natural disposition is hardwired into us from cold and snow being associated with negative consequences for us. 

[Typhoon Tip]

29 minutes ago, bluewave said:

There may be something else at work which links back pretty far in the human collective experience. We evolved through very cold conditions during ice ages when many didn’t survive the harsh conditions.

So the cold was something to be feared in generations since those experiences. Warmer conditions were something to be welcomed following these harsh eras. So we don’t have experience yet as a species of warmth being something to be feared.

Instead at least in the U.S, most of our internal migration has been from colder climates to warmer ones. This forum is really in the minority. Since most people outside our forum would be happy if we didn’t really have winters at all. It’s why so many go to Florida during the winters.

If you notice an Arctic outbreak or snowstorm usually gets much more media attention than a heatwave. My guess is that this natural disposition is hardwired into us from cold and snow being associated with negative consequences for us. 

You know ... speaking of diatribes ( lol )  ... wrote this paragraph in that missive,

"At this stage of our species evolution we are brilliant enough to suspect if not outright predict calamity, yet too stupid to believe those visions ... Immediate gratifications and/or preexisting interests that have to be suspended in lieu of what those visions might suggest, becomes a conflict that won't be resolved until people see the death, and feel the pain." 

and it's too generalized. 

What's really going on is that a tiny fraction of living humans are brilliant enough to suspect if not outright predict calamity, but they cannot effect change because they are limited by the insurmountable masses of population that are too stupid to believe those visions ...

There is a pyramid ignoramus dilemma. It's always been a problem for science that a single person .. or small constituency, discovers something huge, capable of truly revolutionizing an understanding of reality - necessarily so if we are all to be 'real' - but they are at the tip founded upon generations of tradition and functioning, unwitting false belief systems.